From the New York Times “By Design” blog, on Friday, November 21, 2008:
For a couple of months there, it was sort of exciting to witness how dramatically higher oil prices were affecting human behavior. Ridership of public transit was up, homeowners were swapping exurban houses for urban condos, S.U.V. sales were down, people were walking. T. Boone Pickens threw cash at a wind farm.
But in more recent weeks, as oil prices dropped, I started hearing indications of backpedaling on all of the above. With gas back down in the $2 to $2.50 a gallon range, there was talk of this all being less urgent, something that could be addressed later. Pickens even scrapped plans for the wind farm!
This is such a strange notion: that an interim price drop somehow solves the larger issue of our dependence on oil. And it’s something we see with another precious resource: water.
Click here to read the whole article.